Ray Hadley let fly today on his 2GB show over claims made by Tim Flannery in the latest Quarterly Essay — and republished by Crikey yesterday — that a caller who revealed details about Flannery’s house knew...
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"SIESTA KEY - Overnight, a mystery appeared on the Siesta Key beach in the form of an 8-foot tall Lego-man emblazoned with a strange message.

"NO REAL THAN YOU ARE," the fiberglass Lego-man's shirt says.

Resident Jeff Hindman was walking the beach early Tuesday and first saw the 100-pound Lego-man in the pre-dawn light. He thought it was marine life, washed ashore overnight and left in the gentle ankle-deep surf."﻿

Well this is perhaps the strangest media release I've received in a long time. It's from those odd people at Gasp. You know them: they created a social media stir by insulting three women in their Melbourne store only to then make matters worse by rebuking their complaints with yet more insults.

So rather than trying all they can to build some bridges - they've instead offered the below. Deluded come to mind. (Style counselling, really!? And I love how Matt Chidgey refers to himself as Mr Chidgey. Dear me.)

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GASP PRESS RELEASE

Firstly, thank you for the wonderful coverage and tremendous exposure. The recent media coverage has fast tracked our brand onto the international stage. As a direct result of the recent hysteria surrounding our brand, we have enjoyed a surge in online orders, from Interstate and International customers as well, which is a wonderful prospect for us, given that this has been an area of our business, we have been focusing on to enhance.

Even though Ms O’Neill’s intentions were diabolic, thanks to her efforts; our brand has now reached out to a customer base, which previously was not even aware of our existence. To keep up with recent spike in demand, we have advertised for several new staff on Seek.com.au. For those interested, we urgently require extra retail staff, IT personal and fulfilment staff for to help meet the demand for all our online orders.

Upon review of the CCTV footage at our Chapel street store, it will become obviously clear to the public that Keara and her friends were having a lovely time in our store; they appear in the footage to be laughing trying and admiring quite a few garments, having great time.

We have decided not to publicly release the CCTV footage of Keara, as we do not want her to be subjected to further ridicule and unwanted attention.

Unfortunately, the group was ultimately asked to leave not because of their size, but due to their rude and inappropriate conduct.

Had the same behaviour been on display at a pizza shop, whereby Ms O’Neill and her friends were found to be making similar remarks such as, “the food here tastes like a dead bird” while other patrons are happily sitting and enjoying their Saturday family meal, it would be reasonable to expect that they are again asked to leave. Unless of course the claim was they requested to leave because they are fat, as was previously asserted by Ms O’Neill.

Mr Chidgey is our Head Stylist and Operations manager, he was chosen to represent our company simply because he is the oldest in the company and everyone else is much younger, he is not our official spokesperson nor is he the head of PR, Our company is a small family business who does not employ PR people , all we do is create and sell fashion. We are proud to be Australian and value the Australian way of life, we believe that everyone is equal regardless the way they look or what they wear.

A similar thing happened a few years ago, the media portrayed us villains, There was a lot of media during a copyright court case between Gasp and Rosemin, Rosemin accused Gasp of copying them but ultimately it was proven that Rosemin in fact copied GASP! We will promise to have a follow up pending the courts final outcome. We welcome you to follow it up so the public know the truth.

Our business believes that every woman is entitled to look and feel fabulous. This is why we would like to invite and challenge Ms O’Neill and her three friends to attend one of our stores and be dressed by one of our best stylists.

We would to invite the girls to our Melbourne Central store for a style counselling session, and let the viewers vote on their favourite looks. Whichever look the majority votes on, the one that makes Ms O’Neill look the most beautiful, we will happily give to Ms O’Neill and her friends as a gift to enjoy their special occasion.